SLAC Colloquium: Saurabh Jha - Rutgers University

The Accelerating Universe: What Does It Mean?

Jha will describe how observations from telescopes on the ground and in space are used to answer what it means that the universe is expanding, and how they confirm that finding. "In 1998, two rival teams of astronomers studying exploding white dwarf stars came to the surprising conclusion that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate," Jha writes. "This discovery ushered in a revolution in our cosmological understanding, and was honored with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.”

Jha will also discuss what this discovery implies for the future, as well as talk about how new projects like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will shed light on the mysterious "dark energy" that dominates and drives our accelerating universe.